Even if this is only myth it is clear that the Romans themselves gave Minerva
a great deal of importance from the earliest of times. In fact we know that
Minerva was also an Etruscan deity. Being predecessors of the Romans it is clear
that the deity preceded the Roman state or at least was contemporary with
Ancient Rome. A similar scenario is applied to the Roman
Goddess Venus, possibly descended from the more visceral ancient
fertility goddesses.

Gods and deities within the Roman social context

The
brief outline above gives an immediate idea of how complex the panorama of
ancient Roman gods can be: a mixture of local, inherited and imported divinities
which became part of ancient roman society and fabric as part of the
intercultural mixing and trading which was present in the area of the river
Tiber from the very earliest ages of the city. In much the same way ancient
Roman writing came to be.

Ancient Roman gods were part of every day life – so much so that religion was
intimately integrated with public institutions and religious ceremony was part
of the office of Roman
magistrates (as were also their military duties in the
Roman army). Most interestingly,
Consuls would
have the authority to consult the
augurs and
aruspices for
divine signs when about to embark in important tasks such as war or call public
elections, as well as to propose the introduction of new deities from abroad
(handled by a specific group of priests known as duoviri and then decemviri) and
building of new temples.

Roman mythology, roman gods and the individual within Roman society:

Before jumping in to look at the Roman approach to their Gods (and those of
others!) it is worth scratching the surface of a further area of interest though
it is rather more modern in approach and esoteric which can help us gain a
deeper understanding of what it was to be a Roman. A
quick overview of Carl Jung's work will quickly give a relatively modern
approach to understanding the human psyche.

One aspect of the model considers the "collective unconscious" - a sort of
Platonic concept suggesting that individuals are born and live as a society with
a bunch of collective concepts which can be more or less undefined for the
individuals within it. The Collective Unconscious is considered as being made up
of a number of "Archetypes" (ie the basic ideas or concepts are subdivided into
categories) and one manifestation of these is also in the mythology and common
symbology and imagery we live with in our every day lives. Freud had a similar
idea and regularly used mythology as a means of looking at the psyche, for
example "the Oedipus complex" and such like.

It stands to reason that much the same model can be applied to Roman
individuals and Roman society. Without going into excessive detail it is easy to
imagine how the ability of Roman society to absorb, homogenise and re-elaborate
a broad spectrum of mythology, gods and divinities went a long way to
continuously defining and redefining their "collective unconscious" and as such
shaping and changing the very definition of what was considered within the term
"Romans".

Roman accounts of their gods and myths

There are a few texts which give us particularly good accounts of the myths
behind the Roman deities:

Gaius Julius Hyginus’ "Fabulae" (stories) which describe a long list of
mythical figures, including some of the deities.

Ovid’s "Metamorphoses"
which likely made use of Hyginus’ book (they likely knew each other)

Apuleius’ "Golden
Asse" aka "Metamorphoses" but not to be confused with those of Ovid. It
gives a particularly good account of the popular attitude to magic, the
Romano-Egyptian cult of Serapis and the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Roman approach to gods and deities

The Roman approach to deities and
religion was rather different to the sense of religion we might recognise
nowadays: an ancient roman god was essentially another, more powerful being with
whom the individual could essentially strike a pact or contract: I sacrifice
such and such in exchange for such and such a favour... Clearly the deity was at
full liberty of choosing whether or not to answer your call.

As might be guessed from above, ancient roman gods therefore became a mixture
of various influences, not only those of Greece and the orient and indeed it was
important to the Romans that the deities should feel honoured and respected in
coming to Rome (in exchange for protection of the city!).

Indo-European Deities in Rome

A strong underlying current came from the early indo-european deities (ie
from those people settled in central Europe in the second millennium BC) which
transformed into the various gods of the Germanic, Iberian, Italic, Greek,
Etruscan peoples...Amongst these traditional deities we have
Jupiter, Diana and
Vesta. Cerere, Minerva,
Juno,
Mercury,
Janus, Venus
and Mars were common to the Romans and the
Latin peoples of central Italy.

Deities imported to Rome

Other deities were imported from the orient such as the Magna Mater,
from Egypt (there were many temples and followers of Isis), from the Greek
colonies of southern Italy such as Hercules
and Apollo and of course from Greece itself –such as the god of medicine
Aesculapius (Asclepius).

Importing a divinity even had its own specific rite and reason: persuading an
enemy’s divinity to remove to Rome essentially meant the enemy had lost
protection and was hence doomed to lose the war. The specific rite was called
"Evocatio" and we have a very good example of this when Camillus "persuaded"
the goddess Juno – Juno Regina - to move to
a temple in Rome. To Roman minds, her acceptance was the evident reason for the
fall of the city of Veii where she had hitherto resided. A similar example of
evocatio is to be had during the Punic Wars
when Scipio Africanus in 146BC
against the Carthaginians with the goddess Tanis, translated by the Romans as
Juno Caelestis.

Bacchus is an interesting
ancient Roman god – absorbed from a variety of areas: partly taken from Etruria
but heavily influence by Greece and Orient ie originally oriental or middle
eastern and closely associated with the taming of vines which then traded
westward to Greece and across the Mediterranean.

Therefore the Romans happily absorbed and welcomed the divinities and indeed
the following of one divinity rather than another held little problem for
individuals so long as it didn’t interfere with the general concept that the
state divinities (the Capitoline triad) were the ones which essentially ruled
the city and its dominions: the triad represented not only the Capitoline rule
but also the rule of the Patrician class. It is therefore not surprising that a
more plebeian version arose known as the Aventine triad around the 5th
century BC.

The plebeian Aventine triad included the goddess of cereals Cerere (or Ceres)
as well as Liber (Bacchus - wine) and Libera (Proserpine - spring). Often
erroneously compared with the equivalent Greek triad of Demeter, Dionysus and
Persephone.

The Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus was learned from the
neighbouring Etruscans (Uni, Tinia, Menrva) and the Roman king
Tarquinius Priscus,
himself an Etruscan later subtly transformed it into the triad of Jupiter, Juno
and Minerva.

Each household had its own deities which were regularly attended to in daily
prayers, closely associated with its deceased ancestors. There were two types of
household deity: Lares and Penates. The Lararium is to be seen in the atrium
(sitting room) of many houses in
Pompeii – a small altar with a small roof over it which contained some clay
statuettes, representing the household ancestors. The
Roman nobility even had
a right "ius imaginis" to display the casts of their ancestors in their atrium.
These would be used in family funerals – as if the ancestors were partaking in
the funeral and welcoming the recently deceased to join them.

So we have the:

Genius Familiaris: the essence or vital spirit of the family: the
family’s power to procreate. We see this genius becoming rather powerful during
the empire, and it was the Christians’ refusal to pay homage to the genius of
the emperor (ie their staunch monotheism) that actually got them in trouble as
traitors as opposed to their belief in Christ per se.

Lar Familiaris: who guards the family fire and hence deserves his
regular sacrificial offerings as well as foodstuff fallen from the table (by
burning them)